


coda

by asdfghjkla



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-24 07:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asdfghjkla/pseuds/asdfghjkla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a series of unrelated prompts taking place during and after the events of ptolemy's gate. spoilers for everything. mostly kitty and kitty+bart focused.</p><p>.</p><p><b>3.</b> <i>and how selfish must you be to say i wish you were here</i></p><p>John Mandrake towers in the centre square, smooth bronze, conservative smile, staff clutched proudly in a single hand, larger than life and standing much, much too tall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. kill the little black dots

She cuts her hair with the knife on the first night.

It’s gotten too long, too in the way. She’s never had more than a trim, kept it lengthy at her mother’s will, a peace treaty of sorts. Now when it gets wet she thinks of gravegunk, shudders. It’s too familiar. It has to go. Let it be a symbol for the step in a new direction. Whatever.

She’s bent over the dripping sink. There’s a dark spot along the rim of the drain, probably some sort of mold. Ick. Ruststained pipes snake along the faded wallpaper, drop down into the flaking bathroom tile. The new apartment is - and she’s putting this kindly - a dilapidated dump. But that’s okay. It’s a roof, it’s a place to sleep. It’s enough. Home has never been much of a place, anyway.  
Kitty bites her lip and studies her reflection. The locks framing the left side of her face are just lopsided enough to make a noticeable difference. She wrinkles her nose. She wishes her hair didn’t curl at the ends, it just goes and makes everything more complicated. She steadies the knife, and continues.

She’s got a bag of non-perishable groceries tipped over on the single bed. Her coat is slung over a woodworn chair she found in a nearby alleyway. The tear in the shoulder is still apparent, she hasn’t had the time to mend it yet.

She remembers the wary look the landlord gave her as he handed over the key. She wonders how she must have looked, frazzled and weary, eyes much too heavy for a girl, still only fourteen after everything. But he took the advance payment, all the money she had saved up from working for Mr. Pennyfeather. (There was more, still, in the till, back at the shop, but she didn’t feel right taking it, even it does belong to ghosts. Besides, Kitty thinks, I finally shook Mandrake. I don’t want to do anything that’ll get him back on my tail. Yeah. Right.)

He press any questions. That was the nice part. Just asked if she was gonna be alright in a way that seemed more for luck than anything else.

Kitty squints at her reflection again. She cut it a little shorter than she was meaning to in the attempt to balance out both sides. It’s strange. She doesn’t look much older after all.

Maybe she’ll buy a new coat. Some new shoes, too. It’s time for a new everything.


	2. necromancy

She draws the circle fifteen times over the course of the week: six on paper, eight on the bathroom mirror, and once in ash, before she claims perfection.

Bartimaeus is perched at the windowsill in the form of a raven. He thinks he is being symbolic. She thinks he is being ridiculous.

The books lie in a corner. They smell like mildew and dust. The spines are bent from being open too long, feathers holding relevant pages in place. Ancient, indecipherable language and portraits of foul things; she does not need them now.

“While I admire your conviction, I do think you should reconsider.” He is some small, pathetic thing with soft paws and large eyes. She frowns and nearly pauses.

“That’s not going to work on me.”

She lights a match, just to be sure. The flame burns down to her fingertips and her hands do not shake one bit. Good. That is good.

(Last time she faltered she found the candles broken and the matches in the gutter. The free reign was more trouble than it’s worth. And If you really wanted to stop me, you could try breaking me instead, she had said, surrounded by rain and wax and broken glass, and he hadn’t even looked her way when he vanished through the shattered window.)

“Kitty.” A flash again, black feathers, and the raven is staring down at her with dark, dark eyes. “Kitty, you can’t honestly except to bring anything back from the dead. It’s impossible.”

She breathes, almost laughs, and lights the candle regardless.

“Like that’s ever stopped me before.”


	3. and how selfish must you be to say i wish you were here

"Look at that. They got the cheekbones all wrong."

"It's the expression that's throwing it off for me."

"You're right, not nearly as smarmy enough."

"He was never that composed."

"And that hair - why I don't think I've ever seen it look so neat and clean."

The lights across the street change colour and the sound of traffic resonates with the swell of the river. The sky is heavy and grey, typical of London. The park is quiet, but not empty. Everyone's dressed for rain.

A girl sits on a bench with a dove at her feet.

"They should hire another architect, honestly. This guy's a lout, absolutely talentless," says the dove.

The girl shrugs. "There's plenty more around the city. The government's commissioned about a dozen to mark the anniversary."

"Are any of them good?"

She starts to speak then pauses. She thinks of the pile of paper Piper presented months ago. She thinks of the drafts after drafts presenting stances noble and heroic, tasteless memorial cliche, obtuse propaganda, like they hand't progressed at all. She thinks of the scratched proposal, already dismissed, of the boy with his arms raised in summon, face set, his hair swept back with heat and might of suggested flame, and the raven at his side.

"Nah," says Kitty.

John Mandrake towers in the centre square, smooth bronze, conservative smile, staff clutched proudly in a single hand, larger than life and standing much, much too tall.

"What perplexes me the most," says Kitty, folding her hands together on her lap, "is how they manage to keep the pigeons off the statue."

"I think they use imps for that, actually."

"Oh," says Kitty, and can't help but feel guilty.

She dreams still of the other place and the even dreams feel more tangible than the pane ever did. If it weren't for the trust in her own memory and the face in the mirror, she'd doubt such a place could be built from anything but dreams.

(She remembers the dark, dark, dark eyes of the not-boy sitting across from her in a circle, poised like a cat, the curve of his face and the slope of his nose and the mole on his shoulder marked in detail so tender it made her heart ache. She wonders if her eyes seem like that to anyone, now.)

She thinks about how cruel it is, to be torn from light and forced to be earthly. To be reborn again and again into skin that must shift to keep away the weight of the bones. ( _and what became of the demon, do you know?_ Piper had asked, and Kitty said simply, _the spirit left._ and bit her tongue before she could go on, _he's gone, stop asking, erase his name from the page and from history and let him rest._ )

"Sorry," says the girl with the old skin and the young eyes and a feeling of homesickness that was never meant to be hers. "I should really stop calling you like this."

The dove dips its head into its wings and preens its false feathers. "I don't really mind. I like the visits."

They sit in silence and look at the statue that is not Nathaniel in the slightest but the hero from some story the world has yet to understand.

 _Bartimaeus,_ she wants to ask, _do you think of him often?_

It's rhetorical and she knows it. Knows it because she's seen who rose from the circle she drew out in the wake of too many sleepless nights and a dire need for closure and a longing she couldn't put into words. She remembers how her heart leapt when she saw the sharp elbows and gaunt face and bad suit standing in the centre of the circle, recalls that split second where she wasn't sure who it was that she was expecting, who she had been hoping it would be. He greeted her without grudge or hesitation and though she promised it would be the only time, she kept coming back to the circle, lighting candles, seeking, reaching, selfish, and it felt so free, to speak her frustrations and impatience with someone who would understand. _we shook the world and they're still not doing anything about it_ and, _revolution doesn't happen overnight, Kitty, give it time._ The stories followed, unsolicited. The boy in the desert, the boy in the attic, the wars and the warlocks and the waste without end.

(She's got questions, endless. _what kind of stories would you tell about me?_ he laughs at that, and it feels good to hear it. don't be coy. you're incredible. _where should i go from here? what makes this so hard for them to understand?_ and he sighs for her sake and without the need for breathing. there's still a ways to go, we're all still working on the way to there. _do you think our souls go to a place like yours? i think i'm no longer afraid of dying. i think i should be. do you think there's a place out there we can reach?_ if anyone could, it would be you.)

 _Bartimaeus,_ she wants to ask, most of all, is, _how can you miss someone you barely got the chance to meet?_

"I'm glad you're here," says Kitty, finally, quietly, and the dove flutters to her side in a wingbeat, looks her in the eyes in the way no real animal can, so old, so otherworldly, so odd in the unfiltered amity that's directed her way, "I'm touched you want me to be."


End file.
